Applications of Mesoscale Atmospheric Models in Short-Range Weather Predictions During Satellite Launch Campaigns in India

Abstract

Knowledge of meteorology forms the basis of scientific weather forecasting, which evolves around predicting the state of the atmosphere for a given location. Weather forecasting as practiced by humans is an example of having to make judgments in the presence of uncertainty. Weather forecasts are often made by collecting quantitative data about the current state of the atmosphere and using scientific understanding of atmospheric processes to project how the atmosphere will evolve in future. Over the last few years the necessity of increasing our knowledge about the cognitive process in weather forecasting has been recognized. For its human practitioners, forecasting the weather becomes a task for which the details can be uniquely personal, although most human forecasters use approaches based on the science of meteorology in common to deal with the challenges of the task. The chaotic nature of the atmosphere, the massive computational power required to solve the equations that describe the atmosphere, error involved in measuring the initial conditions, and an incomplete understanding of atmospheric processes mean that forecasts become less accurate as the difference in current time and the time for which the forecast is being made (the range of the forecast) increases (Doswell, 2004; Ramachandran et al., 2006; Subrahamanyam et al., 2006; 2008).